In Due Time
by Higuchimon
Summary: [5/5, complete, Pitch, Jack, Guardians] Pitch knows he would've won if he'd had Jack on his side. If there had been no Guardians to fight him. So he's going to make certain that those things are what happens. The laws of time do not allow change. But Pitch is the Nightmare King, and he makes his own laws.
1. Time For Secrets

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> Rise of the Guardians  
><strong>Title:<strong> In Due Time: Chapter 1: Time For Secrets  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Pitch, Jack, Guardians  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> chapter: 3,192||story: 3,192  
><strong>Genre:<strong> Drama||**Rated:** PG-13  
><strong>Notes:<strong> This is mainly movie-verse, but with some elements from the book-verse.  
><strong>Summary:<strong> [WIP, Pitch, Jack, Guardians] Pitch knows he would've won if he'd had Jack on his side. If there had been no Guardians to fight him. So he's going to make certain that those things are what happens. The laws of time do not allow change. But Pitch is the Nightmare King, and he makes his own laws.

* * *

><p>Jack knew there was something going on with the other Guardians. None of them could keep a secret worth beans, especially when it involved him. He suspected that had something to do with all those centuries where they'd been too focused on their work to really talk to him, so now they tried to make up for it by going in the opposite direction. Which wasn't really a <em>bad<em> thing; he rather liked the attention, so long as they didn't go too overboard. Which they had a habit of doing.

But this was different. He'd caught them looking at him when they thought he was too busy with whatever he was doing to notice, and one and all, they looked worried about _something_. Bunny especially turned out prone to long lingering looks that made Jack want to check the shadows for anything that shouldn't be there.

Rumor did have it that Pitch was busy regaining his power, and no one had to say it for all five of them to know where his eyes would turn once that happened. Pitch had never taken defeat well, and if Jack had seen the Nightmare King's picture in the dictionary next to 'revenge', he wouldn't have been even remotely surprised. He might also have found a marker to decorate it a little, but that was beside the point.

For the moment, though, he couldn't get any of the others to say a word about what was bothering them. Any time he asked, they always brushed it off with a laugh and a smile, and North would frequently offer fruitcake in a clear attempt at distraction.

He skipped along through the workshop, making sure to stay just out of trouble, while still peering closely enough at the toys in all their various stages of construction to satisfy every passing whim he had. After the last few years, he'd grown used to being able to avoid the yetis in the throes of work, while still seeing everything that he wanted to. It was almost boring now, not having to worry about being chased out and with constant access.

Not many people could say they'd ever find Santa's workshop boring, but Jack Frost was special in a multitude of ways.

A glimpse of gray, followed by a form of sparkling feathers and another of gleaming gold, caught his attention on one of the higher floors and he glanced up just in time to see the other Guardians entering North's personal office. Jack frowned; he hadn't heard anything about a meeting, and he knew that he hadn't seen the Northern Lights at any point. _Something_ was going on, and he wanted to know what.

It only took a moment for him to dart upward, the wind curling around him like the old friend it was, and he whispered softly his request, to get to where he could see what was going on, without the other Guardians seeing him. As always, the wind listened, pulling him high up into the rafters and depositing him at last on a high perch where he had an excellent view of what was going on below.

All four of them were there, North behind his large desk, Tooth hovering in the air, hands clasped before her, Bunny over by the fireplace, and Sandy bobbing here and there, without draining the usual glass after glass of eggnog that Jack had become used to seeing him with. Something serious was up, without a doubt.

"You're sure, Bunny?" Tooth asked in between her usual handing out of orders to her fairies. Jack couldn't see Baby Tooth anywhere, and that worried him as well. If Tooth brought any of her fairies anywhere, it was almost always her tiny second in command. Not seeing her there sent a faint trail of unease down Jack's spine.

"Absolutely. It's going to be soon." Bunny looked more serious than Jack could remember seeing him in his entire life. "You got everything ready, North?"

"Yetis and elves are prepared, as are the defenses." North glanced from one to the other of them, worry in his large blue eyes. "But you say it will be of no use?"

Bunny shook his head. "Nope. Nothing we can do, but we're going to try anyway."

Very seldom since he'd become a Guardian had Jack ever wanted to drop down in the middle of them and ask what in the name of the Man in the Moon were they all talking about. He didn't like secrets being kept, especially when he didn't know what they were. Keeping them from other people he didn't mind so much, but when it came to him? He wanted to know. And clearly it had something to do with him, since he hadn't been invited to this little meeting.

"What about Jack?" Tooth asked, fluttering even more before she dropped back to deliver more orders. It would never fail to impress Jack how she could carry on at least two, if not two hundred, conversations at the same time, and not actually lose track of any of them. But he hunched over, staff held tightly between his fingers, and did his best to follow the conversation that he was interested in.

Bunny shook his head, and Jack wished he could be close enough to see the expression on his face. Where he was now was too high to catch anything. "Can't say a word. You know why."

_Maybe she does, but I don't,_ Jack almost hissed the words out loud. After all the weeks of glances and half-caught conversations and fretting and worries, he _needed_ to know what all of this was about.

"You are certain, though?" North asked, leaning forward. "Absolutely certain?"

"Couldn't be more if I wanted to be. And I wish I was," Bunny said. He fiddled a little with one of his boomerangs, eyes cast downward. "This is just like him, you know. Cause a lot of trouble and there's nothing we can do to stop it."

Jack guessed Sandy agreed, but his safe perch meant that he not only couldn't get a good look at what Bunny's face looked like, but he couldn't see Sandy's images, either, not clearly enough to guess what he was trying to say to the others. It didn't look like they were paying that much attention either, since no one looked at the tiny golden man.

"Do you think -" Tooth's question fell unheard into the sound of a door slamming open and the deep voice of one of North's yetis yammering something that Jack couldn't understand. He'd never bothered to learn yeti, though he'd always kind of wanted to. There were always too many snowstorms to make and snowballs to throw and these days, visits to Jamie and his other friends to glory in.

North stood up, and only now did Jack notice his swords on the desk in front of him. They almost seemed to leap into his hands as the toymaker moved around to where the other Guardians now gathered together.

"You're certain it's him?" he asked the yeti, who nodded quickly, adding something else that Jack wished even harder he could understand. "Then where's Jack?"

Well, if that wasn't an invitation, Jack didn't know what one was. He dropped down to the floor as light as one of his own snowflakes. "Jack's right here!" He smiled, a slight slash of frost and a hint of fury glimmering in his eyes. "And Jack has a whole lot of questions for all of you."

Did Bunny flinch? Jack thought he did. He also thought he liked it, because they _should_ be upset by whatever it was they weren't telling him.

"Jack also needs to come with us. Pitch has invaded the Pole once again." North interrupted whatever might have come from the looks Jack sent them all, but most especially Bunny. The kangaroo knew all about this, whatever it was.

But as much as he wanted to get every tiny little detail out of Bunny, the mention of Pitch put all of that to the back of his mind. "Pitch? What's he doing now?"

"Going after something he's got no right to," Bunny said, moving along smoothly as they headed out of the office and down to wherever the heck North was leading them. Jack knew the workshop fairly well by now, but he still hadn't made it to all of the little hidden nooks and crannies. North, on the other hand, knew this place like perfectly, and guided them without so much as hesitating through the myriad of staircases, hallways, and storage rooms.

"Yeah, that's really descriptive. Think you could actually tell me something?" Jack didn't think that they would. And since none of them would so much as meet his eyes, he wasn't surprised when they didn't.

Whatever all of this was about, he'd have to wiggle it out of them later, since they ended up standing in front of a simple door. Jack gave it a look, then looked at North.

"Pitch is in there?" He knew that he'd never been in here and didn't know what North could keep in here that the Boogeyman would want anyway.

"That he is." North hesitated only for a heartbeat, exchanging a swift glance with the more senior Guardians before looking back at Jack. "Be careful."

Jack really, _really_ wanted to ask more about that, but before the words could form, North threw the door open, the room lighting up in that moment, revealing Pitch Black standing in front of... a giant clock?

_This has got to be a joke._ Jack gripped his staff even as he and the others rushed into the room.

The moment the light came on, Pitch ducked into the nearest shadow, his sharp voice snapping outward. "Really, North, you can't even leave me alone for five minutes?"

"Wasn't stealing Sandy's sand enough for you?" North growled, both of his swords pointing toward the shadow lord. "You look for something else that isn't yours to take?"

"You haven't used this old thing in centuries. No one has." Pitch's shadow flickered near the clock. Jack stepped forward carefully, his gaze marginally divided between their enemy and the other Guardians. Were they looking at him, too? Now was not the time to get distracted.

"That doesn't make it yours to take," Bunny threw out his words as sharply as he did his boomerangs, the wooden weapons sailing across the room. Pitch ducked away, remaining in the shadows until they returned to their master, and rose back up to glare at them all.

"But I'll take it whether it's mine or not. I think you've all had this world to yourselves long enough. It's _time_ matters were fixed."

Jack shook his head; he'd had more than enough of people not telling things straight out today. "What are you talking about, Pitch?"

"Oh, they still haven't told you all of their little secrets, have they?" Pitch smiled, showing too many teeth for Jack's liking. He didn't think even Tooth would want a closer look at these.

Still, Jack had heard more than enough from Pitch already. "Let me guess, you're going to tell me what they aren't." He'd gone through this before. Pitch might not lie, but everything he said was shaded with so many different flavors and slanted toward his particular view of the world, that it couldn't be called truth either.

"This, Jack, is a time travel device," Pitch said. He'd clearly learned from their last battle, since he kept himself hidden in the darkness instead of coming out to fight. That didn't reassure Jack at all. Something was up around here, and it included Pitch as well as him. "It can take whoever uses it anywhere, any time. And I'm going to use it."

"He's joking, isn't it?" Jack asked, darting a quick glance around. "Time travel? Really?"

"He's not joking about what that can do," Bunny said, a note of seriousness that Jack couldn't remember ever having heard from him before. "North's old teacher Ombric used it plenty of times."

Oh, yeah, he really needed to sit down and have a very long talk with everyone about everything that had ever happened that he didn't know about. Maybe once they kicked Pitch out on his nose they could do that. Maybe then they'd stop hedging about whatever it was they were hedging about and he could get some honest answers out of them.

"What would you want with a time machine?" Jack started to turn toward Pitch, ice crackling up and down his staff. He had to admit to himself that he didn't really care. If it had been in here this long, it probably didn't work anyway and he wanted the fight over with.

"Why don't you find out?" Pitch laughed low and rich and mocking, fading back into the shadows. "I want you to have a front row seat anyway, Jack." Those words came from behind Jack, and he turned just quickly enough to see a cloud of nightmare sand blowing toward him. His eyes widened and he tried to back off, to get away from it, but Pitch was too close and the dust landed on his eyes and he could feel Pitch pulling him into his arms, and he fell into water and ice and shadows.

* * *

><p>Pitch could hardly believe how easy all of this was. He would've thought the Guardians would fight harder, not only to save their precious time machine, but their <em>precious<em> Jack Frost as well. But it was almost as if they _wanted_ him to make off with both of them.

As soon as Jack fell into his grasp, Pitch rose up through the shadows to extinguish the glittering light overhead, dousing the entire room in darkness. He needed that to make away with the clock itself, as well as Jack. In all of his eons working with darkness, this was probably the largest single item he'd ever stolen, and it took more effort than he wanted to think about.

He'd gone to a lot of trouble over the last few years to regain his strength and reassert his dominance over the Nightmares. But still...just a fraction too easy, and he didn't trust anything that was easy.

But trust or not, easy or not, he'd succeeded. The giant clock now rested in one of the storage rooms in his own lair, one that had gone empty for centuries. Figuring out the details wouldn't take long. He'd hoped to have that much done before he brought the device here, but the Guardians' interruption put paid to that. How _had_ they known he was there? He'd made certain not to trip over a single alarm, and working his way past the workshop wards had taken weeks all by itself.

Perhaps it wouldn't matter in the end. He'd succeeded in both of the thefts he'd planned and now he had all the time in the world to rearrange time to suit his particular whims.

"Uhhhh..." Jack stirred from where Pitch had him chained to the wall. Soon enough the chains wouldn't be necessary, but until that happened, Pitch had no intentions of letting his prize slip away. Slowly frost blue eyes opened and Jack lifted his head, looking around in utmost confusion.

"Took you long enough to wake up. I was beginning to think I'd overdosed you." Pitch slid closer, hands behind his back, staring thoughtfully at his prisoner.

Jack blinked a few times, then straightened up as best he could, eyes flashing bright with anger. "Pitch! What do you think you're doing? Let me go!"

He yanked on the chains, the fingers of one hand curling as he most likely sought his staff. As if Pitch would've left it anywhere where Jack could find it. Breaking it didn't factor into his plans this time. Jack just didn't need it now.

"Why would I want to do that? You're going to end up liking it here very much very soon." Pitch smiled warmly, or his best approximation of such, at Jack. "You won't be able to imagine living any other way."

Jack stared at him as if he'd never heard such words in all of his days. "You have got to be kidding me."

"Not at all, Jack. But why spoil the surprise so soon?" Pitch moved a little closer and gestured to the large clock. "Let me tell you what else I plan to do first."

"Oh, no. Torture." Jack sighed, dropping his head. "Can't you just kill me and get it over with?"

Pitch drew his head back, affronted by the very idea. "Why would I want to kill you? I told you, you're going to love living with me. That does imply that I'm not going to kill you, dear boy."

"Whatever." Jack shook his head, glancing over toward him with a weary set to his shoulders. "So, go on, babble about whatever it is you just have to get off your chest."

Pitch determined that Jack's attitude was going to be the first thing to go. All in due time. Of course. "I told you this is a time machine. Whoever uses it can go whenever and wherever they want, from the beginning of time to just five minutes ago. And I've got five very special stops that I want to make."

Jack tilted his head, a frown forming between his eyes. "What are you..." Something clicked in his mind. "You're going to do something to the Guardians!"

"Clever boy." Pitch patted Jack's cheek, not at all surprised when the young Guardian jerked his head away. "But you don't have to worry. I'm not really going to hurt them."

"Why don't I believe you?"

"I have no idea why. When have I ever lied to you?" Lying was beneath a Nightmare King's dignity, really. He found it so much easier to get what he wanted with other methods. Besides, lies could be uncovered and found out. The truth worked harder and for better rewards in the long run.

"I know at least one place I could mention," Jack muttered. Pitch ignored him; he hadn't lied at the South Pole. The Guardians hadn't trusted him then, and with their actions now, Pitch himself wondered what was going through their minds. In fact...

"Whatever happened then, you should be aware of this now: the Guardians did nothing to stop me from taking you. And the last that I saw of them, they were making no moves to track you down, either. They seem quite content to let me have you." Pitch shrugged even as he started back over to the time machine. "Really, that doesn't surprise me, and it shouldn't surprise you. But don't worry yourself about it. When I'm done with this, there won't be any Guardians to interfere with me ever again: and that includes you."

He could hear the sudden sharp breath Jack drew in and smiled to himself as he began to set the controls. The world would soon be better than it had ever been before, and he could not wait to get started.

**To Be Continued**


	2. None Get Away

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> Rise of the Guardians  
><strong>Title:<strong> In Due Time: Chapter 2: None Get Away  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Pitch, Jack, Guardians  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> chapter: 3,151||story: 6,343  
><strong>Genre:<strong> Drama||**Rated:** PG-13  
><strong>Notes:<strong> This is mainly movie-verse, but with some elements from the book-verse.  
><strong>Summary:<strong> [WIP, Pitch, Jack, Guardians] Pitch knows he would've won if he'd had Jack on his side. If there had been no Guardians to fight him. So he's going to make certain that those things are what happens. The laws of time do not allow change. But Pitch is the Nightmare King, and he makes his own laws.

* * *

><p>"Just think about it, Jack. Instead of three centuries of being alone and ignored, you can have three centuries of a family!" Pitch waved his hands toward Jack, as if by sheer intensity he could convince the Spirit of Winter that he meant everything he said.<p>

Jack blew a chill breath up his face and sighed. Honestly, he would've preferred it if Pitch really did start torturing him. He was pretty sure he could handle that. Everything the Nightmare King kept babbling about in relation to a family and the Guardians not existing set his stomach churning and little tendrils of fear wriggling all through him.

He tried to fight those off, not wanting to give Pitch any kind of ammunition against him, but from the way those silver-gold eyes slipped toward him, and that knowing little tilt of his lips, Pitch sensed his frets and fears loud and clear.

Jerk.

"So what, exactly, is it that you plan to do?" He wasn't certain how he could stop Pitch, being chained up and all, but he was a Guardian. He wasn't going to let this guy just randomly do whatever it was he planned on doing, not without some kind of a fight. "You could make it a little clearer, you know." Pitch liked to talk. Pitch would definitely want to go on about his plans and about how wonderful everything would be. Again. And again. And again.

Pitch checked the large clock one more time, then gestured toward Jack. The sandborn shackles slipped away from the wall and pulled Jack's wrists in front of him, the rest of the sand solidifying into a long chain that led to Pitch's hands.

_Could be worse,_ Jack told himself as Pitch tugged him over. _It could be a collar._ Annoying as it was to be chained to Pitch like this, the thought of being led about on a collar was even worse.

He hoped that wasn't a fear. He wouldn't have been surprised at all if Pitch had changed it to that if he did fear it.

"This isn't really an answer, you know." He lifted his bound hands and shook them, wishing for his staff's comforting presence. Three hundred and more years he'd held it, seldom letting it out of his sight for more than a few minutes at a time, and he didn't like not knowing where it was now. It wasn't broken; he would've known if Pitch did that (again). But he _wanted_ it.

"But this will be," Pitch said. He turned toward the clock and did something that Jack couldn't entirely see. Before he could form another question, brilliant light engulfed them both, and Jack could only hear Pitch swearing in languages he felt certain didn't exist anymore.

When the light cleared, Jack found himself and Pitch standing in a thicket of rich green bushes, dotted with pale blue flowers the likes of which he'd never seen before. Granted, he didn't see that many flowers anyway, spending most of his time when they weren't around, but he'd seen a few since being able to visit the Warren regularly, and these didn't look familiar at all.

He started to open his mouth, wanting more answers than he had, and wondering if Pitch needed some kind of refresher course in what providing answers actually _meant_.

Before a single word could make it out of his mouth, a band of sand solidified itself over his lips. Jack glared at Pitch; really, didn't he have anything that vaguely resembled _tact_?

To be supremely fair, Jack himself only vaguely knew what 'tact' was, but Pitch was older and insisted he was a king, so he should've known better, right?

"Remain quiet. I don't want us to be seen," Pitch murmured into Jack's ear. His stomach churned at the other being that close to him, but the idea of somehow ruining Pitch's plans by having them being seen did seem to be extremely interesting. If nothing else, Pitch had just said he didn't want it, which meant Jack wanted to make it happen. And the sooner, the better.

Pitch tightened his grip on the chain that still led to Jack's shackles and jerked it a little, not enough to pull Jack off his feet, but it did get Jack's attention.

"You don't know where we are, do you?" Pitch asked, clear superiority in his tone. Jack rolled his eyes. Of course he didn't. He hadn't been asked his opinion about this little vacation, and it was too warm for him anyway. He would've preferred to hang out somewhere with better weather, less green, and more snow.

Though, the more he considered it, the more vaguely familiar this place did seem. He'd never been here before. He was very certain about that. But the place _felt_ just ever so slightly familiar, as if he'd...somehow seen it? Been told about it? Been somewhere like it?

That last one seemed the most right, though for the life of him, he couldn't think of why. He looked around again, spying more trees, grass, and bushes that seemed utterly unfamiliar and hauntingly familiar the same time.

"Are you certain you don't recognize any of it?" Pitch's tone indicated that Pitch, at least, thought that he should. "Nothing even vaguely familiar?"

Jack shrugged; again, he wanted more answers than Pitch seemed inclined to give. He'd figure it out eventually, though. Even if doing so came second place to finding a way to wreck all of Pitch's plans.

The bushes they stood behind were thick and tall enough to hide them completely, though they were clearly bushes and not trees. Just very tall bushes, Jack decided. The leaves were... he blinked and took another look there, wishing he could rub his eyes. Had that trip through whatever done something to his vision? Because there wasn't any way he was actually looking at _egg-shaped_ leaves!

But he was. As much as he didn't think it would be possible, instead of the kind of leaves he was sort of familiar with, these were definitely ovals, and in the same glimmering shades of green that he'd seen at the Warren.

The Warren! That was it! Jack almost leaped with joy as he made the connection. If it hadn't been for the shackles and chain, he likely enough would have, and he was tempted to try for it anyway.

Pitch smiled, and all of Jack's joy shuddered at the sight. He wasn't the tooth fanatic that Tooth was, but seeing that assured him he wouldn't have a night of restful sleep for a week.

"I see you figured it out. Or some of it, at least." Pitch leaned forward to peer through the bushes, fingers parting the twigs cautiously. "We are on a world other than Earth. The name of it in its own language would twist your tongue to even begin to pronounce, but it's best known as the Pooka homeworld."

Pooka. That tapped at Jack's thoughts; he'd heard the word somewhere. On occasion he wished that he paid just a scrap more attention to some of what the other Guardians told him about themselves. Sure, he'd enjoyed North's story about how he'd once fought off an entire army with a bent steak knife, but how was that going to relate to this?

Jack realized somewhat belatedly that the sky overhead was full of stars, not a one blanked out by city lights. He hadn't seen a sky like that in at least a century. There wasn't any sound of machinery or cars or anything in the area. What on Earth could be here that would make Pitch want to come here and wreck...whatever it was?

"Almost here," the Nightmare King murmured, and Jack saw that he was looking up at the skies. Shadows clung around him, tiny whispers of voices just on the edge of hearing starting to swirl around them. "Pay attention, Jack. You're going to have a wonderful history lesson very soon."

_Yeah, if I didn't pay attention to the Guardians when they tried, what makes you think I'm going to pay attention to you?_ Jack rolled his eyes, but watched, more because he wanted to stop Pitch's plan than anything else. He knew that it would be hard, without his hands free and without his staff, but he had to think of something. Maybe if someone came by he could break away and cause a commotion? Or just make a strange noise that would throw things off? A dozen different ideas sloshed around in his mind and he couldn't decide on one of them.

The silent forest's peace shattered. From out of the sky there came a ship, one that resembled vessels he'd seen when he was much younger, only these _flew_ through the air, and their weapons fired without warning or challenge of any kind. Energy bolts lashed forward, setting trees and bushes aflame, and dozens of small animals leaped from their hiding places, running and howling in shock and pain.

Jack had seen scenes similar to this before, when people set fire to the woods to drive out 'dangerous animals'. He didn't want to watch now.

Pitch's hand on his chin, tilting his head upward, gave him no options. "Watch. This has only just begun."

It was probably just as well, Jack decided, that he _was_ gagged, now that he thought about it. He didn't think he would've been able to stop himself from yelling and screaming at the invaders to stop, from blasting them with every form of ice and snow at his command, from doing anything and everything he could to get them to stop this travesty.

The wild creatures, none of which he recognized, were only the beginning of what leaped into sight and fled, all of them too terrified to even realize that Pitch and Jack were there in the first place. Then another form, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, leaped from somewhere Jack couldn't identify, hurling weapons back at the ship, one that exploded into brilliant colors and puffs of bright smoke, visible clearly even in the darkness of night.

_Bunny?_ Jack tried to move forward, but Pitch kept him on a short leash and shook his head.

"You're just here to watch and learn. To see how I'm going to erase each and every one of the Guardians, and make certain that they don't even _exist_ anymore. And this is where I'm starting: with the Guardian of Hope."

Jack had heard people insult their mortal enemies with less venom that what fell from Pitch's lips with those words. The idea of there being no more Bunny, no more eggs or Easter or _hope_ at all, sickened him more than anything else he'd heard so far. He shook his head as violently as he could, trying with all of his strength to get his hands on the chain.

Perhaps he got lucky. Perhaps Pitch took his eyes off him for just a bare second, as a half-dozen warriors raced by the two of them, paying no more attention to them than if they'd been part of the scenery itself. But Jack managed to wrap his hands around the chain and concentrated with every scrap of energy he could muster, sending a bolt of ice up it.

Frozen sand collapsed from his wrists and away from his mouth, leaving him free, and he stumbled back, drawing in a sharp breath. He could do some things without his staff, but flying wasn't one of them, and he didn't know if this world's wind would answer him anyway. He'd never left Earth before. He'd never even thought about it.

Still, he shook himself into sense and began to hurry after the group of fighters, uncertain of what he would tell them. Would they believe that he'd come from the future, a prisoner of Pitch Black, and would that mean anything to them even if he did?

"Hey!" He snapped the word out, paying no attention to anything else, and squawked a heartbeat later when a firm hand closed around his throat. At first he thought one of the Pooka did it, until he caught a glimpse of smooth gray skin and a far too familiar breath in his ear.

"Be _quiet_. The Pooka do not allow strangers on their world, especially since tonight, their world is going to end," Pitch hissed. Jack fought harder, hoping that his one word had managed to at least get through to them.

A tiny bit of tension fought between flaring and easing as he saw the group looking around, hopefully because of what they'd heard. One of the group moved toward them, and Jack held his breath, even as Pitch let another band of black sand wrap around his mouth, keeping him quiet. Shadows swirled around them both, and Jack strained harder, only to find himself unable to move from Pitch's side.

_What is he __**doing**__?_ None of this made sense to Jack. It didn't make any more when he got a very good look at the one who was coming closer.

He wasn't quite as tall and his fur was a slightly different shade of gray, and the markings weren't as intricate as the ones Jack remembered. But the way he moved and the glint of his green eyes told Jack who this was more so than anything else could have.

_Bunny?_ There he was, the Easter Kangaroo, and while he wasn't dressed in the few bits of armor that Jack was used to, he still held himself like a warrior.

Pitch growled deep in his chest and stepped away from Jack, letting the shadows keep a tight grip on the winter spirit. Jack pulled against them with all of his strength, and couldn't get so much as a moment of release. All he could do now really was watch.

The language meant nothing, but Jack could see they saw Pitch now, and Bunny's eyes widened first in surprise, then anger. Some of the others gestured to the ship still sending down burning blasts of energy, the fires far beyond what could be extinguished easily, and other beams tearing up the ground, revealing tunnels to Jack's surprised eyes. No wonder the sky was clear of city lights: the city was underground!

He would have time to think about that later. Right now, his full attention focused on Pitch, as the Nightmare King's scythe materialized in his hands, and he swung forward, the blade moving too quickly for the eyes to follow. A high-pitched cry squealed in the depths of Jack's throat, and it was only by extreme agility that Bunny leaped backward in time to avoid the strike.

The others in the patrol, or whatever it was, surged forward, but Pitch paid them no mind at all, sinking down into the shadows and rising up next to where Bunny stood getting his bearings again. Jack cheered him on silently, wanting to see Bunny slice into Pitch, to see his boomerangs in action, exploding eggs, _anything_ at all.

What he saw was Pitch's scythe whisking forward, edge sharp as hate, as fear, as anger, as rage, and what he heard was a cry such as he never had before: a Pooka in pain. And what he smelled was a scent he'd caught too many times over the centuries and wished never to again, every time it happened: blood.

Bunny lay on the ground, two of his companions near him, two other starting toward Pitch, eyes bright with fury. The Nightmare King only laughed, a sound destined to haunt Jack's dreams for years to come, and stepped back, ignoring the others.

"I'll let him have the rest. He'll do a good job of it," Pitch said as he wrapped himself and Jack once more in the deep darkness. He tilted Jack's head up to the heavens once more. "Look, Jack. That is who I used to be...and who I'll be again, when all of this is over with."

Jack could just barely see a shape on the ship's deck, one tall and elegant, and radiating a shadow that made his heart sink and urged him to find somewhere to hide before whatever it was saw him. He could see features, ones that weren't identical to the one who held him now, but close enough so that he could see what Pitch meant.

Pitch pulled him closer, triumph thick in his voice. "And now that I've gotten rid of _him_, it's time to go on to the next one."

Light flowed around them again, Pitch's shoulders tensing, and Jack had only a few moments to see the fallen form of Bunny, his companions around him, and someone running from the far side of the burning disaster that had been a peaceful meadow such a short time before.

_He can't do anything,_ Jack mourned to himself. He'd seen the wound, and he didn't think anyone could've survived that.

"Do you see what I'm doing now, Jack?" Pitch asked, and only with that did Jack realize they were back in the same place they'd started from. "The Guardians won't be around to stop me, because they're not going to exist at all. They will have never existed. Died before they could be chosen. Never born in the first place. Never, ever in a position to fight me, no matter what."

The shadow bonds vaporized, Pitch feeling no need for them now that they were back in his own lair. He smiled darkly at Jack. "Raised and trained to never, ever do anything except what _I_ command you to do."

Even eating North's fruitcake didn't make Jack feel half as sick as _that_ idea did. "You're joking."

"Not for a moment, Jack. Not for a single moment. You saw what I was like then, at the peak of my power. This was even before the Dark Ages. This was when I ended the Golden Age of the universe." Pitch sighed, a deep, nostalgic sigh. "I rained desolation and destruction down on every world that I could. The Pooka stood against me, and I killed them all." One corner of his mouth twitched upward. "Or I thought I had, until I realized that one escaped. But now I've fixed that. It's a complete set: utter destruction, not a single one has survived."

Jack swore to himself that the moment he had his hands on his staff, he would freeze Pitch in an iceberg so thick that even dropping it into the heart of the sun wouldn't so much as make it drip.

_Bunny._ He didn't give Pitch the satisfaction of so much as wet eyes. Instead, he threw his head back and stared the other right in the face.

"So what else do you have in mind?" He would find a way to end Pitch's plan. It couldn't end like this. He wouldn't allow it.

**To Be Continued**


	3. A Worse Better Life

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> Rise of the Guardians  
><strong>Title:<strong> In Due Time: Chapter 3: A Worse Better Life  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Pitch, Jack, Guardians  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> chapter: 3,201||story: 9,544  
><strong>Genre:<strong> Drama||**Rated:** PG-13  
><strong>Notes:<strong> This is mainly movie-verse, but with some elements from the book-verse.  
><strong>Summary:<strong> [WIP, Pitch, Jack, Guardians] Pitch knows he would've won if he'd had Jack on his side. If there had been no Guardians to fight him. So he's going to make certain that those things are what happens. The laws of time do not allow change. But Pitch is the Nightmare King, and he makes his own laws.

* * *

><p>Pitch hadn't said anything at all to Jack as he fiddled around with the time clock once more. That didn't mean he hadn't spoken at all, though. Jack could hear him muttering, though catching a clear sentence was almost impossible. He suspected Pitch did that on purpose, just to annoy him. He wouldn't have put anything at all past the Nightmare King after what he'd already seen.<p>

_Bunny._ Jack steeled himself just at the thought. A world without Bunny wasn't a world he could imagine. For that matter, he couldn't imagine a world that didn't have the Guardians at all. He just couldn't wrap his head around it. Even spending three centuries without them paying attention to him didn't do it. He'd known they were there, even if he'd been alone.

His own future prospects if Pitch succeeded weren't that much better. Never being able to deny Pitch? Jack couldn't help but be a little glad that he hadn't had that much to eat before all of this started. It probably would have made a reappearance by now if he had.

"Let me see, where would the Cossacks be at this point," Pitch muttered, the words faintly floating toward Jack where the Spirit of Winter sat perched on a rocky outcropping in the lair. While Pitch had worked, Jack had spent his time searching for either an exit or his staff. He didn't find either one. Pitch only left this place through his shadows, which meant he didn't actually need an exit or entrance. That also meant that this was the best place to keep his stolen time machine and his kidnapped Guardian.

Jack had tried every shadow he could find, just on the off-chance that one of them might somehow hold a way back outside. All he'd done was bruise his fists and get very bored, very fast.

Now he sat himself on the outcropping and watched Pitch. If he couldn't get out of here – and as much as he hated it, he had to deal with the fact he couldn't – then the best he could do was find out what Pitch was going to do to Tooth, Sandy, and North, and stop it.

He'd figure out a way to stop what Pitch had planned for _him_ later. When he could stop screaming internally every time the concept crossed his mind.

Cossacks. He didn't remember everything the others had mentioned about their pasts, but something about that caught on his attention. North knew Cossacks. Or was one. Or had been. Something like that. It had come up when he'd asked why North used swords, when most of the tales about him that humans knew never mentioned the fact.

"I grew up using these!" North had waved both of the sharp blades over his head. "What else would I use in battle?"

Jack refused to remind him that most stories about Santa Claus didn't involve him going into battle at all. Their forms were shaped to various degrees by the stories told about them, but those weren't the entirety of what made them. He still found himself hoping that he'd get to age a little bit more once stories about him started going around on a more regular basis. He loved kids, but being fourteen forever wasn't on his personal schedule.

All right, so Pitch was going after North next. From what little bits he could pick up, Jack sketched out that he probably wanted to make certain North never made it to Santoff Claussen in the first place, but stayed a bandit wandering the world in search of treasure. Which likely wasn't the worst fate that one could bestow, but it wasn't _right_ for North. And Jack was determined it wouldn't happen.

Pitch straightened up, a satisfied smirk on his thin lips. "There. That should take us exactly where we need to be." He crooked a finger at Jack, who didn't move an inch, glaring at Pitch. "Life will be _so_ much better once you've learned to do as you're told. For both of us."

Jack still didn't move. "I should warn you, I've got allergies."

"Allergies?" Sand swirled about Pitch's fingers as he gestured once more and Jack still refused to move.

"Yeah. I'm allergic to doing what you tell me to do." Jack smirked, but only for a moment. Sand lashed out toward him, wrapping around his wrists and pulling him toward Pitch.

"You'll get over it." Pitch settled Jack next to him and reached out to the clock. "Do behave yourself, Jack. There are so many things that could go wrong when you're time-traveling. You wouldn't want to _hurt_ someone, would you? Or end up hurt yourself."

If the clock hadn't begun to send them hurtling through time, Jack knew he would've come up with the most awesome comeback to that ever, something along the lines of gladly hurting Pitch no matter what time it was. As it was, he had to concentrate to keep himself from getting dizzy as they spun through time and space. Whoever had invented this thing really needed to have test driven it themselves, in Jack's opinion. If they had, they would've improved it so it wasn't as much of a pain.

Jack noticed something was off the moment his head cleared and he began to see what was going on around him.

_All right. Woods. Snow._ He liked this place already. He guessed they were probably in Russia, though he couldn't have put a time to any of it.

Then the most important part clicked in his mind: Pitch wasn't there with him.

Jack leaped to his feet and checked every corner of the clearing he found himself in, poking into every shadow cast by the trees and rocks. He didn't know if that would do anything to Pitch, but he figured it couldn't hurt. Nothing happened at all.

_Something went wrong with the transport?_ Pitch was probably around here somewhere, and likely looking for North. And he'd end up looking for Jack once he'd finished changing North's past. Which meant only one thing to the Guardian of Fun, who hadn't had a single good time since seeing Pitch back at the workshop.

He had to find North first and somehow warn him not to trust anything that didn't lead him to Santoff Claussen. And do it in a way that still left him with his head and all of his arms and legs properly attached.

* * *

><p>Pitch liked to laugh, when matters were going his way. Right now, everything was doing exactly that, so he really, truly wanted to laugh. Unfortunately, that might well have tipped his hand, so he held it all inside.<p>

He would get a chance to do it, once this particular trip was over with.

Jack kept swearing he'd never do anything to help Pitch. Pitch was going to make certain that he did, even if he didn't know when he did it.

* * *

><p>Jack hurried through the woods, missing his staff and the wind all over again. The wind did blow here, but without his staff, he couldn't fly. He still had control of the ice and snow, and he zipped over a frozen river without even noticing it. But flying remained the province of the wind, and he needed his staff to do <em>that<em>.

He hadn't seen a single sign of any Cossacks, nor anyone else for that matter. The closest he'd come was a thin trail of smoke in the sky, and a quick dart to the side showed him that was from a small village, not from the kind of camp that wandering warriors might make. He didn't bother going down there; he'd been passed through by enough children in his time, and he doubted there would be anyone down there who'd believe in Jack Frost anyway. He needed to find North, not get walked through.

Without his staff and the wind, he wasn't as fast as he was used to being, but he still managed to cover a great deal of ground before a familiar type of cry hit his ears. He stopped where he was, looking around.

"That can't be right." It couldn't be; it didn't make any sense.

But then it came again, and Jack knew he couldn't just keep going, not without looking into this. He was a Guardian; if he heard a baby's cry, he was going to find out what the problem was.

It didn't take much longer for him to track down the child, and he stared for a moment or two, not quite certain if he believed what he heard, much less saw.

There, tucked up under a bush and wrapped in a tattered red blanket, was a baby. He could only be a few months old, and whatever else he had, he had a set of powerful lungs, as his cries echoed all over. Sooner or later, some hungry predator would come see what the noise was all about, and that would be the end of this.

Well, not on Jack Frost's watch! He'd never had a problem interacting with small children, such as babies and toddlers. He didn't know why it was, but most of them only started to look through him around the time they began to be able to comprehend legends and myths. When they didn't hear about him, he guessed, they stopped being aware of him.

He put that thought aside quickly and picked up the baby. That little village would do nicely for a new home, he decided. The wind tossed several good smells toward him as he drew closer to it again, one of which reminded him of his old home. Their next door neighbor had been the village baker, and everything that came out of her oven smelled just this side of heaven. This one here seemed cut from the same cloth.

Jack looked down at the baby in his arms, who had calmed down during Jack's quick run through the forest. _Don't know who you're going to be, but it's better than being a snack for something large and hungry._ He settled the child down on the baker's doorstep, then took two steps back, scooped up a double handful of snow, and slammed two of his best snowballs on the door.

He couldn't be seen, so he didn't move an inch as the door creaked open, and a young girl of perhaps thirteen looked outside. She blinked at the sight of the child on the doorstep, then looked back over her shoulder, calling out in a language Jack understood, but only after thinking hard about it.

"Mama! There's a baby out here!"

Another woman, her skirts and apron dotted with flour, came to the door, and Jack watched with pride as they picked up the baby and brought him inside. He wasn't ashamed at all to dart over to one of the windows and listen in to them taking care of the new arrival, and talking about how there hadn't been any signs of who left him there at all.

_Good luck, kiddo._ Jack smiled, reassured that he'd done something right at least, and headed back to where he'd been when he first heard the child. He needed to pick up his search for North, and hope that he could find his friend before Pitch did.

He'd no more set foot back in the forest before a far too familiar laugh began to echo all around him. He stumbled to a halt; if he'd had his staff, he would've pointed it all around, just to cover all of his bases. As it was, he turned in every direction.

"I know you're there, Pitch."

"I've been here all this time, Jack. Watching you. Watching you do _exactly_ what I wanted you to do."

Jack seldom got cold chills. But Pitch was very good at giving them to him. "What do you mean?"

Something tugged at his attention and he looked down to see his shadow stretching out before him. Rising up from it was...Pitch!?

_No wonder I couldn't find him! He really was there!_ Oh, Jack would've given so much for his staff and the chance to unleash some frozen hell on the Nightmare King at that moment. As it was, he could only snatch up snow for another snowball, and he was too angry to even think about putting some of his special joy magic into it.

"Oh, can't you tell?" Pitch laughed, avoiding the snowball with practiced ease. "You just delivered Nicholas St. North to his new home."

Jack couldn't pale all that much either. But again, Pitch did a very good job of making that happen. "What?"

"Just what I said, Jack." Pitch strolled closer to him, hands tucked behind his back. "A band of Cossacks is meant to travel this way in an hour or so. They would have taken the poor abandoned child in, starting him on his way to becoming a great bandit king." Pitch turned up his lip for a heartbeat, before his most dangerous slasher smile twisted across his features. "But now he will be a simple village baker. Assuming he doesn't die somewhere along the way of some random disease or in a war, because he has no idea of how to fight."

Every word Pitch spoke struck Jack like a physical blow. That was why Pitch had hidden in his shadow: he'd known Jack would go looking for North and would not be able to resist a wailing child or giving it to a good home.

And while North being a baker wouldn't be a _bad_ life for him, it wasn't the _right_ life.

Pitch's fingers traced lightly down the side of Jack's cheek, touching where a cold tear froze there. "We have another place to go now."

Jack said nothing at all, shaking. He wanted to run back, to take the child from the bakers and put him back where he could be found. But his limbs wouldn't move at all, and he had no idea if that were Pitch's doing or not. Regardless, shadows pulled him in close, and he couldn't bring himself to resist, not now. He'd done something horrible and there was no way to change it back.

* * *

><p>Pitch had never seen Jack cry before. He liked the sight of it, all truth told. Perhaps now the boy would be more willing to listen when he was told. If not, Pitch had many more lessons in mind, which he would administer either once the other Guardians were no more, or before.<p>

He thought that was the best way to phrase it. He wasn't used to time travel and how it could twist sentences into verbal pretzels.

For now, he drew Jack close to himself, as once again the power of the clock reached out and wrapped around them, sending them tumbling through time and space until they reached the next location.

_Two Guardians down, one hardly able to lift his own head up right now, and two to go._ He'd given a great deal of thought for how to deal with Toothiana and Sandy. Sandy especially would be difficult, for more reasons than he wanted to consider at the moment.

But he would still do it. The siren song of having no actual Guardians to fight him enticed him far too much to do otherwise. He really felt that he should've done this much sooner. Granted, he wouldn't have had any idea of how powerful Jack Frost could be as an ally if he had, which would've probably ended up causing him trouble eventually without the boy on a proper leash.

The mental image of _that_ certainly appealed to him, be it a leash of words or something physical. He would have to think that one over for a while and see if it were worth the trouble.

At the moment Jack didn't seem to care enough about resisting for Pitch to bother with it. He remained silent and withdrawn, eyes half-closed as the world realigned around them. Pitch wondered if that was because of the issues of traveling in time or if he were still internally beating himself up over having played into Pitch's hands.

No matter. In due time, the boy would be his anyway. And at the moment, he had something else that he needed to do.

"Jack." He tapped on the boy's forehead to get his attention, doing so over and over until Jack opened tear-reddened eyes and looked at him. "We've arrived."

Jack said nothing at all, but his eyes did shift around, taking in the shadowy alleyway they'd landed in. Pitch smiled at the hints of confusion glimmering in his expression. He could hardly wait to have three centuries to mold and teach him. It had been so long since he'd had someone he could train like a...

Focus, he reminded himself. He couldn't let himself get sidetracked.

"We're in the Far East. A certain child has been born and is about to be sold to a rich master."

Jack drew in a stuttering breath, more clarity and sense showing now. That was good; Pitch liked someone he could combat wits with, not a mindless minion. Just because he planned to remove Jack's ability to deny him didn't mean he didn't enjoy a good verbal sparring now and then.

"What are you talking about?" Really, Pitch wondered if the boy hadn't ever heard any of the tales of the other Guardians. But so be it. At least he would tell Jack the _truth_, unlike their sanitized tales of their past. He doubted North had ever mentioned all of the people he'd robbed or Bunny told a tale of how arrogant and self-centered he'd always been.

"This slave, Haroom, will grow up to sire Toothiana. Or would have. As it is, I think I have a much better idea."

He'd considered many options for this, ranging from buying the child himself and raising him until he could make the child a Fearling to arranging for a sudden and inexplicable death in later life, before a certain hunt began. But now a new, brilliant idea gleamed in his mind, and he decided on that one right away. It was much better than trying to tend to a messy human child could ever be, and he'd already killed Bunnymund. Pitch didn't like copying himself.

"Do I want to know or is it going to make me sick?" Jack pushed himself to his feet, resting the fingers of one hand on the sandstone wall to one side of them. He didn't look at his best, but Pitch decided some of that could be chalked up to the heat being more than he especially liked. The boy was the Spirit of Winter, even if his powers weren't at their peak without his staff.

"I don't know, Jack." Pitch smiled, indicating for the boy to come along with him. Oh, this was going to be absolutely _rich_, and the best part was that it would take almost no effort at all for him to do. A few carefully chosen words and that was all that it would take. "How do you feel about eunuchs?"

**To Be Continued**


	4. Change In Course

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> Rise of the Guardians  
><strong>Title:<strong> In Due Time: Chapter 4: Change in Course  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Pitch, Jack, Guardians  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> chapter: 3,661||story: 13,205  
><strong>Genre:<strong> Drama||**Rated:** PG-13  
><strong>Notes:<strong> This is mainly movie-verse, but with some elements from the book-verse.  
><strong>Summary:<strong> [WIP, Pitch, Jack, Guardians] Pitch knows he would've won if he'd had Jack on his side. If there had been no Guardians to fight him. So he's going to make certain that those things are what happens. The laws of time do not allow change. But Pitch is the Nightmare King, and he makes his own laws.

* * *

><p><em>All right, focus, Jack.<em> Jack had never liked focusing. He preferred letting himself drift from event to event like a snowflake in the breeze. Becoming a Guardian did mean he paid more attention to certain events, and stopping Pitch Black from destroying or negating all of the other Guardians, _and_ Jack himself, was definitely one of those events.

The only problem with focusing was that he found it abundantly clear that he had not one single clue on how he could undo everything that Pitch had already done. He couldn't even get out of the bands of black sand that kept him tied down and out of Pitch's way while the Nightmare King worked on the clock for the next trip.

_He killed Bunny._ A vivid shudder passed through Jack at the thought. The memory blazed clear in his mind, a bright shock of blood, torn muscles and fur. Jack wasn't a doctor by any means, but he couldn't see how someone, even Bunny, could survive those injuries.

_North..._ His head ducked a fraction lower at the thought of how he'd played right into Pitch's hands with that. Sure, North would grow up a decent human being, but he wouldn't be the warrior who became Nicholas St. North, the Guardian of Wonder.

_Tooth._ That was something even he couldn't get his head completely wrapped around. Instead of killing or giving her a different life, Pitch made sure she would never be born at all. How did that even _work_?

Three down and two more to go, and Jack knew very well what Pitch had in mind for him, in broad strokes at least. The idea of never ever being able to deny Pitch would be fodder enough for a dozen nightmares even if he could somehow undo all of this.

But apparently Pitch was saving him for last, as he worked out where he wanted to go in order to make certain the Sandman never rose to fight him.

Exactly how Pitch planned to do that Jack had no idea. The Nightmare King wasn't giving away many details on that, and likel enough wouldn't, until they were in a position where Jack couldn't do anything about it.

He looked around the area one more time. Pitch had probably hidden his staff somewhere, and if he had that, then he could stop all of this. He could save Sandy, and Sandy would - he hoped - have some ideas on how to save the rest of them.

"Are you ready to go?" Pitch got a sick sort of pleasure, Jack thought, from sneaking up behind Jack without making a single sound.

Jack refused to jump. He could sneak up on people too, and he wasn't going to reveal how startled he was. Instad, he lazily turned his head in Pitch's direction. "Not really. I'm still working out how I'm going to bring this all down around your ears."

Pitch chuckled at that. "You won't. There's nothing that you can do to stop me, Jack."

"If you start going on about how soon I won't want to and I will be your willing ally, I am _not_ going to be responsible for any biological functions I do all over your feet."

One pale gray lip twitched upward, though Jack suspected Pitch wasn't actually smiling. He knew smiles, and that wasn't one.

"Nevertheless, if you wish to stop me, then you'll need to come along anyway. It's time to put an end to the Sandman."

"Joy." Jack pulled himself to his feet, more because he knew if he didn't, Pitch would drag him along anyway. He'd had ringside seats for the last three, and there was no getting out of this one, either.

_Wonder if I'll get to see the past me._ That would be kind of interesting. _I wonder if..._

A sudden idea sparked in the vaults of Jack's mind and he started to move along a bit more eagerly with Pitch.

"So eager to see him taken care of?" Pitch chuckled at that. Jack barely bothered to throw a look over his shoulder.

"I told you, I'm in this to stop you. And like you just said, I can't stop you if I'm not there. So let's get this done."

He hated having to do this, but there was perhaps one slim chance to set everything right, and he could not let it get away from him.

Once again everything spun around the both of them. Jack didn't feel quite as sick this time and wondered if he could be getting used to this. He wasn't sure if that could be a good thing or not.

As soon as everything cleared before him, he was ready to find Sandy and see what Pitch had in mind. He wasn't ready to look down and realize that the entirety of space spread out in every direction, with Earth looking far larger than he'd ever imagined it being more or less underneath him.

"What in the..." Jack breathed the words out, realizing somewhere in the back of his mind that he probably shouldn't be able to breathe here, and it would likely be better if he didn't think about it a lot. "What are we doing here?"

"I told you. You really need to pay better attention." Pitch stood not that far from him, his back turned to Jack, attention focused somewhere else. Jack pulled his attention away from Earth, though it wasn't an easy task. He thought he could've stared at that beautiful globe forever. "Yes, she does good work, doesn't she? Or will."

Jack blinked a few times, glancing toward Pitch. "What are you talking about?" There were moments he wished he understood Pitch better. Thankfully those were overshadowed by the moments he was glad he didn't have to.

As he almost expected, he didn't get an answer. What he got instead was a sudden sense that something was moving toward them. Pitch had landed them in what looked like an out of the way area, but where they would have a perfect view for what he wanted to do. Jack tensed, looking for anything that could involve Sandy at all, and saw nothing.

The sense of something moving came again, and this time Jack saw what it was: the same ship he'd seen back on the Pooka world, the Nightmare Galleon.

"There." Pitch's voice all but caressed the word. Jack shuddered; Pitch got creepier every second. Seeing his old ship probably brought back all kinds of memories. Jack wondered what had ever happened to it. What changed Pitch from the Nightmare King that he saw here in the past to the one that corrupted dreamsand and ached to be believed in?

Before he could open his mouth and ask, he saw something else coursing alongside the great ship. It took him two looks to actually understand what it was he was seeing, and he did a very convincing imitation of a fish out of water.

"That's... a shooting star?" He'd never seen one up close before, and especially not one that was clearly trying to avoid the Nightmare Galleon as this one was.

"That is Sanderson Mansnoozie." Pitch's lip curled. "Riding the most special star that ever was."

Sometimes Jack got the idea that Pitch not only knew more about what was going on than anyone else did, but he made a habit of making certain no one he talked to knew what he did, just so he could sound creepy and mysterious. He wished harder for his staff, but not to freeze Pitch in ice. No, right now, he just wanted to smack him upside the head and demand clear answers for once.

Then exactly what else Pitch said sank into his head. "That's Sandy?" He'd always imagined the Sandman as what he'd seen him as all this time; pudgy, made of glittering golden sand, and completely unstoppable on the battlefield. To see a shooting star, and not even be able to properly _see_ Sandy, that was something else altogether.

Pitch gave no answer, but created a swirl of nightmare sand, shaping it into a long, slender spear. Jack winced, feeling the bonds that kept him from attacking Pitch tighten at the appearance of this new sand. This spear reminded him too much of what Pitch had used once before to strike Sandy down. Seeing it all again, in a place and time where Sandy didn't have believers who could bring him back...

"Pitch..." Jack shook his head. "Don't do this."

Pitch paid him no mind at all, but held himself tense, waiting. Then, suddenly, the star seemed almost to separate, two parts that headed straight down for Earth.

And in that moment, Pitch struck, his spear soaring through the shadows to strike at one of those pieces. His aim could not be faulted, and the struck piece spun away, course altered, so instead of crashing anywhere on Earth, Jack could now see it spiralling outward, heading back out into space.

"What did you do?" Jack would've given everything he had to chase after that falling start and put it back where it needed to be. He scrambled after more words, wanting Pitch to tell him something honestly for once. "Why _that_ piece?"

"Because that piece would've been the Sandman. And that one," Pitch gestured to the one arcing down toward Earth now, "is Mother Nature."

Jack shook his head; he'd met Mother Nature before, and she hadn't ever mentioned knowing Sandy or being a star or...well, anything except telling him what he needed to know about being the Spirit of Winter. "Why would you care?"

Pitch smiled his favorite shark-tooth filled smile. "Perhaps I'll introduce you to her one day, Jack. Family should stay close, after all."

If there were two words that Jack Frost knew without a doubt shouldn't be used in the same sentence together, those words were 'Pitch' and 'family'.

* * *

><p>Pitch knew the area around Burgess quite well. He'd roamed the area for centuries, though he hadn't been as attached to it as Jack was. Still, there was the faintest breath of 'homecoming' as he and Jack stepped out of the timestream on a night some three hundred years earlier.<p>

With every moment Jack grew just a breath more tense. Pitch was well aware the winter spirit had some kind of half-baked scheme rolling around in his mind, something he desperately hoped would grant him an impossible victory. Hope and fear were akin to one another, after all, and Jack dripped in fear that his plan would fail and he would indeed spend his entire lifetime in complete loyalty to Pitch.

As if he had any choice in the matter.

"Now, where would you be?" Pitch asked needlessly, making a show of looking all over the snow-covered landscape. "Any ideas, Jack?"

"Staying as far from you as I can," Jack retorted. "I've never been stupid."

Pitch only smiled and pulled them back into the shadows of a tree. He'd chosen this night to arrive for a very particular reason. He didn't want Jack to have more than the minimum of time without being brought firmly to heel. Which meant, of course, that he'd chosen the night Jack arose from the ice, chosen by the Man in the Moon.

He didn't plan to take the boy the very moment he rose up. His plans involved Jack knowing a _few_ things first, such as the use of his staff and that humans couldn't see him. That would make taming him that much easier. But he wanted to watch the awakening of Jack Frost. He'd missed it the first time, being too wrapped up in creating nightmare sand. If he'd only known then...

That was what this plan was all about, though. Fixing the mistakes of the past so that matters turned out the way that he wanted them to.

He kept his attention on the Jack he'd brought with him as well. He couldn't read Jack's mind, but the low hiss when Jack spied his staff, or rather, his past-time self's staff, on the ice told him a great deal. He'd hidden Jack's own staff deep within his own lair, where no one but he could find it, and the boy clearly felt the lack of it.

Perhaps he'd even let Jack get hold of this one, for a little while. Not that it would do any good. After all he'd done, his strength would soon be so much greater that Jack would _beg_ to be allowed to serve him. As would every other spirit in the entire world.

_Crack!_

They both saw it: the ice slowly cracking, and a slender form rising upward as if borne by moonlight and whispers of the wind. The Jack by his side shuddered, fingers clutching together. Pitch drank in the sight, wishing to some degree that his own past self were here. It would be so much sweeter to deliver the boy directly to him.

He would just have to enjoy returning home to see an unconscious winter spirit tied up in his living room, with instructions from himself on how to deal with the boy, and why. It would be a delicious beginning to a long and wonderful time together.

* * *

><p>Jack watched himself stand up and look around, confusion written large in his eyes, and wished that he could get his hands on that staff. It would respond to him, he knew it, but he couldn't move just yet. Not with Pitch right there, staring at his past self with hungry eyes.<p>

_Yeah, getting nightmares out of this._

He'd deal with those later. He wanted to be out of here so he could have them in the first place.

He didn't watch nearly as closely as Pitch did, but he knew what would happen. The finding of the staff, the ability to create frost and ice, the meeting with Wind, and then... the village.

Somewhere along in there, Pitch would strike, and that would be when _he_ had to strike. When he had to make his move and bring Pitch down so he could go back and fix everything.

Maybe he'd even find the time to tell his past self that everything would be all right, that he would find his place in the world...

"You really have improved in flying since then," Pitch's voice whispered in his ear. Jack tensed, refusing to dignify that with an answer. Of course he had; he had three hundred years of practice under his belt. Right then, he'd barely had three hundred seconds. "Perhaps we can fly together one of these days."

Yeah, like _that_ would ever happen. He'd probably get to fly with Bunny willingly a lot sooner than that.

His heart spasmed just a bit at the thought of Bunny. Yeah. He would. Because he would learn how to use that clock and he _would fix it all_.

"Come along." Pitch kept a grip on where the dark sand bound Jack's wrists together and pulled him where he wanted him to go. Jack winced, following along more out of a desire to not see blood trickling down his arms than anything else. The way the sand cuffs bit into him wasn't pleasant at all. Pitch had a lot to learn about making restraints that didn't hurt.

He decided he didn't want to know why he'd thought that. Jack was firmly coming to believe that there were things that the Spirit of Winter wasn't meant to know at all.

Pitch flowed through the shadows easily, arriving in the firelit village at about the same time that Jack of the past did. Jack looked around, halfway trying to find himself, and halfway trying to see who else he could see. His memories of the village were a little dusty with time, but he thought he vaguely recognized the butcher's boy, the seamstress's apprentice, and...

His breath caught in his throat. He could see her. He'd seen her then, but hadn't recognized her, and later she and her parents moved out of town.

His sister.

He'd never tried to get along without breathing before, even knowing he was somewhat 'living-impaired'. Right now, he couldn't imagine what drawing in a breath felt like anyway.

He wanted to go over to her, to tell her that he was all right and would watch over her, even without knowing who she was, until the family left. He couldn't move an inch because of Pitch's bonds on him.

"Now." Pitch either didn't know or didn't care that Jack was seeing his sister, alive, for the first time in three centuries. Jack would've put his money on 'didn't care', no matter what he'd said about family. Pitch simply pulled him along as Jack's past self wandered into the forest, snow falling in reaction to his newfound grief and shock.

Jack wanted to mourn seeing his sister all over again. He didn't have time. Not with Pitch stalking him like this.

He tried to remember what had happened that night. He'd found somewhere to rest, hoping that all of this was just a horrendous nightmare. A small cave, hadn't it been? One he still stayed in on occasion, where he could keep the few items that he liked having for himself. Even a windborne nomad like him enjoyed having a few special treasures.

Yes. There it was. He could see the cave now, and his past self curled up in the entranceway, staff set down in front of him, the hood of his capelet pulled over his head. The snow grew deeper by the moment and Jack started to pull forward, aching and eager to do something, even if it was just start a snowball fight with himself.

Pitch's hand closed on his wrist and pulled him back. "Stay here," he ordered, and Jack snarled, not caring what Pitch wanted or said. Shadows rose up all around him, however, keeping him where Pitch wanted him to be for the moment, as the Nightmare King stepped silently over to the newborn Spirit.

The other Jack never looked up. He might not have heard anything at all. A stream of black sand swirled toward him, and Jack winced to see himself fall over, far more deeply asleep than he would've been otherwise.

Pitch scooped up the previous Jack, reaching down as well to snatch up the staff. Jack's breath came fierce and cold, his fingers aching to claim the staff for his own, for what brief moments he could manage. He strained against sand and shadows, pushing until he could feel just the tiniest bit of give. It wasn't much, but it was more than he'd had before, and he took it with all that he could.

One step. Then another. And another. Pitch moved along the whole time, not even noticing Jack's growing resistance against his bonds. He aimed himself for a certain clearing in the woods, and Jack followed along, still not at a point where he could break free. Every moment made that more possible, so long as he didn't give up, and he wasn't going to. Just to make it happen that much faster, he focused all of his energy onto the bonds. He couldn't conjure as _much_ ice without his staff as he could with it, but this was it. Crunch time. Now or never.

Between one step and the next it happened. The shadows unspun themselves and the sand fell down into an inert little heap.

Pitch began to turn toward him, and Jack struck, leaping forward as quickly as he could, yanking the staff out of Pitch's grip. The moment his fingers touched it, it sparkled with as much frosty energy as his always had. He smiled; this was almost as good as when he'd repaired it once before.

And once again, it was time to defeat Pitch. He pointed the crook end of at the Nightmare King, who still held this year's version of himself in his grip.

"Put him down, Pitch. Then we're going to go undo everything that you've spent all of today doing. I'm not letting you destroy the Guardians."

Pitch's smile slipped over his lips. He didn't make a move to release the other Jack. "Dear boy, what makes you think that I'm going to do what you want just because you point that twig at me?"

"Don't think I won't freeze you." Jack would do it. He wasn't going to let Pitch get away with destroying his family. Ice energy gathered at the tip of the staff and he made certain it would hit Pitch head on if he let fly.

Pitch turned only a little, just enough so that the past Jack hung in the way of the attack. One slender finger rested against the younger spirit's temple. "Put the staff down, Jack, or your younger self will end up with nightmares of the Guardians that will _never_ end. You'll never want anything to do with them, no matter what. THey could beg you on bended knee by morning to be their ally, and you would run screaming from them."

Jack, for lack of a better term, froze where he stood. He didn't have to ask if Pitch would do it. The other would keep his past self in nightmares with a smile on his face, shredding any chance that he would ever have of trusting the Guardians.

Three hundred years _without_ nightmares had done that well enough. He didn't want to think about what it would be like _with_ them.

Slowly he released the staff, and mournfully watched as Pitch slid down into his own lair, emerging moments later without the sleeping form of Jack Frost. He stared at Jack, head tilted to the side, until the winter spirit winced and moved forward, letting the staff clatter down to rest alongside its proper master.

"Now," Pitch said, resting one hand on Jack's shoulder. "Let's go home."

**To Be Continued**


	5. Exactly As Planned

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> Rise of the Guardians  
><strong>Title:<strong> In Due Time: Chapter 5: Exactly As Planned  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Pitch, Jack, Guardians  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> chapter: 3,220||story: 16,425  
><strong>Genre:<strong> Drama||**Rated:** PG-13  
><strong>Notes:<strong> This is mainly movie-verse, but with some elements from the book-verse.  
><strong>Summary:<strong> [WIP, Pitch, Jack, Guardians] Pitch knows he would've won if he'd had Jack on his side. If there had been no Guardians to fight him. So he's going to make certain that those things are what happens. The laws of time do not allow change. But Pitch is the Nightmare King, and he makes his own laws.

* * *

><p>Jack held onto all of his memories as hard as he could. He refused to give them up for whatever would happen when they arrived back in normal time. No, would it even be normal time? It couldn't be, not with everything that had already happened. Or not happened. Or changed.<p>

He figured out one fact very quickly: he hated time travel.

"Here we are." Pitch's voice echoed uncomfortably close to his ear and he pulled himself away the second that he could, cracking one eye open to look around. There was the clock and the room, each the same as they'd always been. Pitch stood close still, watching Jack with hints of anticipation glimmering in his sunset eyes.

Jack's gaze flickered here and there, tense, nervous, expecting any moment for something to change, for the effects of all those efforts to come crashing in on him. Wasn't he going to remember three centuries of whatever Pitch had decided to do with him all those years ago? Consider Pitch the only person worth listening to? The only person worth _obeying_?

It turned his stomach to think about it, and it didn't stop turning, and slowly, ever so slowly, Jack began to smile.

Pitch began to open his mouth, but Jack shook hs head, grinning ever more widely. "Whatever you did, it's not working. I remember everything the way it really happened."

"What do you-" Pitch took a step toward Jack, and Jack darted away, light as a snowflake on the breeze, laughing.

"It didn't work, Pitch! The Guardians stopped you!" Jack kept out of reach of Pitch's grabbing hands, laughing with every word. "You lost!"

"I haven't lost!" Pitch snarled, shadows and sand rising to swirl all around him. "They can't stop me, because they don't exist anymore! All we need is time. Then you'll remember _our_ life together!"

Jack grinned, perching just a few feet away, ready to dart along at a moment's notice. "If that's true, then why don't _you_ remember yet? Shouldn't you know all of this already? Shouldn't you remember what 'really happened'?" Jack made scare quotes with his fingers at that.

Pitch flowed into the darkness and rose up next to Jack, fury in every line of his form. "How _dare_ you? You are _not to deny me_!"

"I always have and I always will!" Jack started to zip away, but the shadows circled around him without warning, keeping him penned in. He didn't back down. He didn't have a reason to. Nothing Pitch did could scare him now.

"Apparently you being a rebellious, obnoxious child cannot be changed so easily," Pitch growled, circling Jack in physical form and in shadows both. Jack ducked away; he wasn't afraid, but he hated Pitch doing this anyway. "But there are other ways to deal with the last Guardian." Pitch had teeth. Lots of teeth, and the way he smiled at Jack showed every last one of them. "I have those cages still. I could lock you up in one of them forever while I get about with the business of ruling the world. Would you like that, Jack? To never again see the sun or the sky, to never make snow days or blizzards? To know that the world lies in the palm of my hand and you can't do anything about it?"

Jack stumbled at that, breathing in harshly. He wasn't afraid of Pitch. He never had been. But Pitch's own words rang in his mind from their first encounter in his lair.

_You are afraid of something._

He'd never thought about not having his freedom to go when and where he pleased, and to think about it being taken away made him shake down to his very core. He'd never survive that. He needed the outdoors; just being inside North's workshop for more than a couple of hours made him itch to get into the fresh air.

The edge of Pitch's robe brushed far too near him, and Jack took off again, scampering at full speed, or as much as he could manage without his staff. He didn't say anything; he didn't have the breath to. All he wanted to do now was get out of here and see the stars again, to feel the kiss of the wind and the delicious aroma of pine.

Pitch's laugh echoed from all around the room and he couldn't find a door; perhaps there wasn't one, he hadn't seen one in his other trips around this place, and he needed _air_!

What he got was a sudden thump into something or someone far taller than he was, covered in fur that carried the sharp scent of paint, and which chuckled in a low, familiar voice.

"Hey there, mate."

Bunny.

Alive.

Jack wasn't often at a loss for words. But as he stared into those familiar, and very amused, green eyes, his throat closed up and he did the only thing he could: slammed his fists against the other's shoulders.

"Where have you been?" He would get answers later, no matter how much the ache for them burned in him now. But if Bunny was there, then that meant he could get out of here. And that meant that Pitch had not won, could not win, _would not win_.

"Tell you all about it once we're back at the Pole." Bunny patted him on the shoulder and looked to where Pitch stood only a short distance away, fury glistening in his sunset eyes. "Coulda told you this wasn't gonna work, Pitch."

Pitch's fists clenched, the sand swirling more around him, the shadows thickening. "How? How are you _alive_?"

"Not just me, mate." Bunny jerked his head, and Jack followed where his eyes led, and out of a swirling portal that twisted the air into a multi-colored spiral of wonder there came three other very familiar figures, each one waving at Jack and giving Pitch looks that clearly spelled out his forthcoming defeat. "I brought some friends."

"I don't think I care how. I think you're all finished anyway!" Pitch's scythe gleamed in his hands and he swung toward Jack, the only one unarmed. Jack didn't wait around to get hit, having already seen the movement. He needed his staff, but even without it, he was light enough on his feet to dodge the blow, feeling the wind of the strike ruffle his hair.

"It's not fair to hit someone who can't hit back!" Tooth spun past Pitch at high speed and as she passed Jack, something long and slim clattered to the ground next to him. He barely had time to register she'd knocked Pitch back before it dawned on him what she'd dropped.

His fingers folded about his staff and he rose to his feet, frost glimmering at his fingertips, unable and unwilling to stop the grin that lit up his face.

"I think Jack should handle this one, guys," Tooth said, buzzing backwards to hover over the others. North and Sandy exchanged a quick look, then both nodded, as Jack turned toward the man who'd kidnapped him and threatened to unmake everything he was for his own sick enjoyment.

"Thanks." Jack swung the staff, ice shards shooting out that Pitch dodged only by the skin of his teeth. The Spirit of Winter leaped forward, pressing his advantage, slashing at Pitch with everything that he had. He didn't know how long he'd been here, but he had a _lot_ of repressed anger to get out, and he couldn't see any reason to hold back.

"Now, really, Jack, you know that you can't get rid of me forever!" Pitch sank into the shadows, his voice coming from all around. Jack looked this way and that, trying to find some place he could target. "We've done this once before, haven't we? And I always come back."

"Maybe so but I'm going to feel a lot better after this." Jack took careful step after careful step. "You can't make me work for you, Pitch. No matter what you try. I'm always going to say no to you."

"You can think that all that you like, but there will come a time when it changes. Dark and cold are meant for one another far more than _anything else_." Pitch drew himself together in one corner of the room and Jack started over there. "We have forever for you to figure this out, Jack. And I'll be there when you do."

Jack's only answer was a blast of arctic cold that by all rights should've frozen Pitch where he stood. Only the fact the Nightmare King slipped through the shadows kept him safe. Everything fell silent in the wake of his departure, the sound of Jack's heavy breathing the only noise in the room.

Finally, Bunny came to rest a paw on Jack's shoulder. "He's gone."

Jack nodded, turning to the others, trying to deny the tears of relief that pricked at his eyes as he took them all in. He'd been too busy before to really comprehend it all, but there they wore, one and all, safe as could be. "You're all right."

"We weren't in any danger," Bunny said, while Sandy produced a myriad of sand shapes that Jack was far too tired to try and understand at the moment. "We can explain all of it back at the Pole, though. And after you get some rest."

Jack would normally take up the chance to argue with Bunny just for the sheer pleasure of it. Right now, however, he only had one reaction that he felt fit the moment: he gave each and every Guardian the largest, strongest, hardest hug that he could manage. If this was a dream of any kind, he never, ever wanted to wake up from it.

* * *

><p>"All right. Spill it." Jack perched on the back of one of North's chairs and stared at the other four. He'd barely let himself sleep the night before, for fear that all of this <em>would<em> be some twisted dream of Pitch's. If Sandy hadn't slipped in there, he might well have never closed his eyes all night.

But here they were, just as they always had been, and he wanted to know what in the name of everything had happened.

Bunny glanced from him to the others, then shrugged. "Like I told Pitch, we could've told him it wasn't going to work. You _can't_ change the past. No one can."

Jack's eyes didn't lift off the other. Frozen fury glinted in the back of his expression, just waiting for the chance to unleash it. "What did you say?"

"Nothing Pitch would've done would've changed anything, Jack. None of us were ever in any danger." Tooth fluttered above him, taking the time away from ordering her minature selves out for a few seconds.

Small trickles of ice formed under Jack's fingers, but he kept himself under control. For now, anyway. "Think you could give a better explanation than that?"

"It's not that difficult. Changing the past isn't allowed. The thing is, Pitch _trying_ to change the past was _part_ of the past." Bunny's ears twitched a fraction. "If we didn't know that he was going to try already, we wouldn't have let any of that happen. But we knew that it would."

Silence fell in between them for a few momnets while Jack worked through this. Thinking about what he'd heard before Pitch's attack, he realized that made somewhat more sense now.

"You knew all along he was going to kidnap me and take that clock." He wanted to get that cleared up as soon as he could.

Four sets of eyes exchanged worried looks before North spoke. "We also knew that you would not be harmed. That you would make it through in one piece." A small smile touched his lips. "And that you would help to put me where I needed to be."

Jack's grip on his staff tightened a little. "What?"

"When you moved me from that forest to the village...the Cossacks in the area would've missed me in the wodos. But in the village, I became the only survivor, and they chose to take me in." North shrugged. "And I became who I am."

"Pitch doesn't know as much as about us as he thinks he does," Tooth added, waving to herself. "My parents realized something had happened to my father, and they were able to fix it shortly after they were married."

Above Sandy's head, images that Jack recognized after a few moments of concentration as being what he'd seen during one of those time traps sprang into existence. Sand Pitch appeared, with Sand Jack next to him, and Sand Pitch threw something at Sandy's long ago ship. The ship flew hard, missing another planet by the barest breadth, and circled around, landing hard on Earth's other side.

"So what about me? And you?" Jack's hand flicked between himself and Bunny. "What made _that_ right?"

Bunny grinned, fingering the edge of one of his boomerangs. "That's something that _we_ fixed. As soon as you're ready to go."

"Say _what_?" Jack wanted to get a solid, unchangeable, completely truthful answer for once in his life. "Can't you just spit it out?"

There was a deep sigh from Bunny. "If I tried to explain it to you, you wouldn't understand it just yet. Better if you see it for yourself. It won't take long."

Jack never quite figured out how he kept himself from icing Bunny to the floor. Perhaps it was just the lure of knowing he'd get an answer if he didn't. But he sprang to his feet and glared at his fellow Guardian. "This had better make sense."

"As much sense as anything to do with time travel ever does." Bunny shrugged and led him over to where the clock rested, guarded by two yeti.

* * *

><p>They stood once again on the Pooka homeworld, with the Nightmare King's ship unleashing all the hell that it did above them. Jack kept himself hunched and tensed, wrapped around his staff, watching everywhere he could. They weren't far from where he and Pitch had stood earlier, though he couldn't be certain of just which direction the 'other' him was.<p>

"This is what you need to know, Jack," Bunny told him, murmuring into his ear. "History can't be changed. Got that so far?" Jack nodded, and the Pooka continued. "So what Pitch did was something he was always going to do, and you were always going to be there with him watching it. That's why we couldn't tell you anything. You would've tried to change it."

Jack's grip on his staff tightened further, his lips thinning, even as he knew Bunny was right. There wasn't any way he would've just let Pitch attempt to kill Bunny, even if he knew that Bunny would make it through all right. He just _couldn't_ have.

He started to ask something else, but the words fled when he saw Bunny with his eyes closed, focusing on something else. He might've tried again, but in the next moment, Bunny's fur shifted darker, and he grew a couple of inches taller, with broader shoulders and a deeper chest.

"What in the-"

Bunny waved him to silence. "Wait and see."

Jack was far better at waiting than most people might've expected. It helped that he didn't have to wait long, as Bunny moved out of the thicket they'd hidden in and toward a group of Pooka a short distance away. It took a moment for Jack to recognize the scene, since he was seeing it now from the other side. One of the Pooka lay on his back, wounds that could only have been inflicted by a scythe bleeding into the ground. Jack caught sight of white hair on the far side, just before the other him was pulled away by Pitch.

_This is...what I saw!_ The Pooka who charged out to tend the injured Bunny... was Bunny! Changed just enough so that he wouldn't be recognized, either by the other Pookas or Pitch or Jack himself.

That was what he'd meant, Jack realized now, all the pieces falling into place. Bunny had saved himself, with Jack there. Jack watched as the changed Bunny administered first aid, along with a few pieces of candy that seemed to ease the other Bunny's pain.

"Take him where he can rest for now," Bunny told the others. "This fight's going to go on for a long time."

Jack could hear pain in Bunny's voice, and bit his lip. _He's the last Pooka. But he was here, saving himself, not all the rest of them._ It twisted something deep within. Bunny might've been able to save them all, or at least more of them. And because he knew that he hadn't, he didn't.

_Time travel sucks._

* * *

><p>Even knowing Pitch, of that era, wasn't anywhere around there didn't help Jack feel any better as he leaped down the hole that led to the fear master's lair. Only knowing that he needed to do this, that he'd presumably done it before, or always would do it, or <em>something<em> kept him going. It didn't take long for him to find himself; he could always find the cold, no matter where it was.

His younger self lay there, still caught up in nightmares, staff just out of reach, features twitching. Jack watched only for a few moments before bending to pick himself up.

_Man, if I could tell you..._ He knew so much that he would like to have said, but Bunny had made it clear: he couldn't change anything. It wasn't allowed. It wasn't even possible. If he tried, then he would be stopped. He hadn't even remembered being in the lair this far back, which meant he'd wake up somewhere else, and not even know this had happened, until it did.

With the help of the wind he swept up out of the lair, one Jack and two staffs in his hand, and headed to a comfortable place he remembered waking up in several times in the past. He grinned to himself; if this was the wrong place, someone would stop him, wouldn't they?

Soon enough he had his younger self tucked neatly away with his staff behind him. Bunny stood a short distance away, resting on a rock, so as not to give away that a large rabbit-shaped being had been in the arae.

"Understand now?" he asked, his voice pitched low. "Time travel's not easy. Can't change anything. All you can do is watch."

Jack nodded; he didn't like it, but he understood, regardless. He still wasn't entirely happy that they hadn't given some hint, of course, and he doubted that he ever would be.

But what Bunny said caught at him, and he turned his attention to where he knew the village rested in the snowy woods. "Bunny," he said quietly, "if all we can do is watch...is there someone I can watch? Just for a little while." He knew he didn't dare stay long; his old self would wake up eventually and meeting in person would not be a good idea.

"All right. Where and who? And when?"

Jack smiled. It was a thin and weak smile, but one all the same. "Over there, right now, and ...my sister."

**The End**

**Notes:** My first Rise of the Guardians fic. I feel kinda proud of it. There will be more in the future, of the genfic and shippy variety (I'm a Jack x Pitch & Jack x Bunny 'shipper, in case you are wondering). I hope you all enjoyed this. The basic book concept I used is that if you try to change history, Bunnymund pops up to tell you you're being naughty and won't let you. So I wondered, what if the attempt to change history was a _part_ of history itself? And thus this little story was born.


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